


Here Lies Cass

by becomingshades



Series: Fireproof [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: EVERYTHING IS SO DRAMATIC WHEN YOU'RE 14!!, F/M, Family, Fluff, Love, Other, Teenage Kicks, dad!harry, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becomingshades/pseuds/becomingshades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just really not how Cass saw any of this turning out. She's pretty sure the universe hates her.</p><p>(<em>a story of siblings and parents and the injustice of being a teen</em>)</p><p>a follow-up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1885575/chapters/4062987">things to ruin</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Lies Cass

* * *

 

This sibling thing was not working out quite the way Cass had expected it to. Sure, she wasn't like, six anymore. And she'd done a fair bit of babysitting these past few years. So she had been aware that babies were like... not all fun and games. And that in real life little siblings were slightly more sophisticated than the dolls she'd pretended with back when she was a child. But this really was basically just horrendously awful.

Like really. For how many hours could one baby actually scream continuously? Surely their bodies were too small to store enough calories to make it through hour three, right? Because this was hour 2.5 and if she didn't get some sleep really, really soon, she was going to have enormous bags under her eyes tomorrow at Ollie's football match and if Benjamin saw her looking like that there was no way he was ever going to ask her out on a date and she wanted to puke even just thinking of him seeing her in such a state but there was also no way her stupid parents were going to let her skive off Ollie's match because now that they were all happy together again there was so much required family time that Cass actually wanted to die. 

Honestly. Who got a new sibling at fourteen anyway? Whose stupid parents couldn't keep their hands off each other and get their birth control sorted and ugh, god, she couldn't even keep thinking about this. It was just too horrible a road to even go down. Though it's not exactly like either of her parents was very good at keeping shit to themselves. They were like overgrown teenagers and frankly, Cass was so over it. Wasn't she supposed to be the one all moony and sighing and obsessed with snogging?

Speaking of snogging. She was never NEVER going to get there with Benjamin if she didn't get some sleep before Ollie's match. 

"MUM!" she howled, flipping over in bed and slamming a pillow over her head.

"What, Cass?" her mum asked, poking her head in the door six hundred years later. Cass shoved the pillow away.

"When is Elouise going to STOP SCREAMING?! I need to sleep!"

"I'm sorry, monkey, but you know..."

"A) Please stop it with the 'monkey,' seriously, mum, how many times do I have to tell you and Daddy? B) Is there not like... Can I go live in Dad's old house? Or can you go live there with Elouise? Seriously. This is ruining my life."

"I am not actually even entertaining that suggestion like it's any kind of real thing. And I'm sorry El is keeping you up, sweetheart. But as you can imagine, your father and I aren't getting much sleep either, so... You know what? I'm going to be probably too honest here, like, the parenting books would advise against this, but-- I do not really care. Like, at all. So please, put on some of those disgustingly expensive noise-canceling headphones your father and I gave you for Christmas and listen to some music or something. I need to go bring this warm wrappy thing to your father."

"UGH FINE!" Cass exclaimed, slamming the pillow back down over her head.

A few moments later, her mum's head poked back into the room. "You know El isn't trying to make your life miserable, right? She's just a baby."

"Tell that to my eardrums," she huffed, flipping back over.

 

*

 

_**This weekend the Styles-McGovern clan were spotted out and about together for the first time since the birth of their third child, Elouise Honore, just over two months ago. Saturday morning Styles was seen wheeling a pram across the fields at Vincent Square while McGovern followed with Elouise in a carrier against her chest and daughter Cass at her side. The family was there to watch Cass' twin brother Oliver lead his school's team to a rousing four - nil victory.** _

_**Styles and his wife were every inch the doting parents with all three of their children. Fourteen-year-old Cass looked like she could do without the attention, but Ollie, who scored one goal and set up the play that lead to a second, seemed pretty thrilled to bask in their praise. In the early parts of the game, Styles and McGovern took turns cradling infant Elouise while the other cheered Ollie on from the sidelines, but after the half Elouise appeared to be asleep in her pram and both parents were able to focus their attention solely on the game.** _

 

*

 

"Cass, sweetheart, would you mind checking on El for us while your father and I finish up down here? I can hear her fussing on the monitor," her mum asked distractedly as she sliced apples into wedges at the island and her dad mixed up his mystery party punch recipe near the sink.

The team was due to come by in the next half hour for a post-match celebration, and the house was kind of a disaster for it. Cass had actually thought her mum was going to kill her dad when he announced the (unplanned) party at the end of the game without even running the idea past her first, and the last hour had been a whirlwind of activity as a result. Of course Ollie, the hero, was upstairs showering off the sweat and grime and grass-stains from his match, which had meant that Cass was saddled with more than her fair share of chores. Shoving baby things into boxes and dusting every visible surface and making sure anything that had ever belonged to her or Ollie was either in a cupboard or their bedrooms. She was so done with cleaning. With helping out just in general.

Sure. She could only complain so much, since this thick idea of her father's would actually mean that Benjamin would be here, in her house, on a Saturday night.  _And_  there'd been enough time to invite Mia, so she would have someone to help her get Ben's attention, since Ollie would clearly be no help. (Naturally, he'd much rather tease her about her crush and tell her she was being daft than help her chat to the guy who is the love of her actual life.)

But ugh. Now she had to go check on her lump of a little sister who was probably just working herself up into a full-on strop, ready to scream her teeny tiny lungs out and keep Cass from properly preparing for Ben's arrival. As if the bags under her eyes weren't bad enough. Or the lingering scent of all the sunblock her mother had forced her to wear to the match. Now she was probably going to be covered in baby sick, too.

Stomping up the stairs to Elouise's room -- the kid was obviously already awake, so what was the use of silence? -- Cass froze in her tracks just outside the door when she heard Ollie in there already, repeating the word "hey" over and over in a soothing voice. El's fussing subsided just as Cass crept up to the door to see Ollie leaning over the cot.

"Hey, tadpole," Ollie murmured, reaching out and dusting his fingertips across her cheek before offering her a finger to grab hold of. "You've been quite fussy this last day, haven't you? What's wrong, Miss El?" Elouise gurgled sort of loudly and kicked her legs, nappy rustling at the movement. "Oh really? Well, I can understand that. Did you have fun at my match today? I hear you napped through my goal. That wasn't a very sisterly thing to do, tadpole."

Okay. That was simultaneously very sweet and very fucking annoying, because ugh, why couldn't Ollie stand in solidarity with her and begrudge Elouise all the hours of colicky screaming and parental attention stealing she was doing? But also... bollocks, it really was horribly cute to watch Ollie fawn over Elouise and if the girls at school could see him now, well, they'd be even more obsessed with him than they already were, which, come to talk of it... she could never tell anyone how sweet Ollie was to El because that would just make everything worse. The girls already constantly wanted to be at her house because her Dad lived there full-time now, having her brother be all lovely to babies would just make everything impossible. She'd never escape the house.

"She's okay then, I guess?" Cass asked, stepping into the room and interrupting the silent funny-face-off Ollie and El were having.

"El's fine," Ollie tossed over his shoulder, still making silly faces at Elouise one after the other.

"Mum sent me to check on her."

"Think she needs a new nappy, I'll sort it, though," he said before finally turning to face her, "Give you some more time to go powder your nose before Ben gets here and all that."

"Ugh, Ol, that's not funny!"

"I beg to differ," he replied just as Elouise scrunched her tiny face up and let loose a wail, "Look, you upset El. She doesn't like liars, or people who shout at her big brother."

"Piss off, Ol," she spat, turning on her heel and pounding up the stairs to her new bedroom. Because Elouise had her old bedroom. Because god forbid anything about this child not be an absolutely massive inconvenience to her life.

 

* 

 

There was literally nothing about anything in Cass' life that was going properly at this point. Mia had been utterly useless, fucking off to go chat up one of Ollie's stupid mates within the first thirty minutes of her arrival. Ollie was only barely resisting the urge to tease her about Ben at literally every single turn -- she could practically taste the jokes he was swallowing behind his pointed smirks. And since her dad was off with Uncle Louis and the girls, who had called round to say hello and stayed for the party, and her mum had to run inside and pull a fresh batch of cookies out of the oven, she'd been landed with Elouise.

So now she was stuck alone in the corner, with a baby in her lap who required actual attention and was making it dreadfully difficult to even have a proper sulk. Which left Cass staring forlornly across the garden at Ben while he juggled a practice ball, trying to beat Ollie's high-count without spilling his cup of punch and laughing loudly with the lads as Ollie tried to distract him.

Cass was so quitting this family for a while. It was decided. She was going to go board at school until she graduated. Or at least until Elouise was old enough to sleep through the night and be like... dressed up in cute clothes that she wouldn't immediately be sick all over.

"You hear that, Elouise, I'm getting out of here. You can have mum and dad all to your horrid little self," she cooed, because she could say literally  _anything_  to this child and if her tone of voice was just right, totally get away with it. Elouise made happy gurgle-y noises back at her. "You are the actual worst attention hog on the face of this planet, you know that, yeah? And that's saying something, considering our father is a pop-star, whose entire job is to be the center of attention, like."

In her attempt to manipulate Elouise's mood via tone of voice alone, Cass hadn't even noticed Benjamin approaching. Almost dropped Elouise right on the floor when his voice sounded.

"This is Elouise then, yeah?" Ben asked, smiling the absolute most gorgeous smile the planet had ever seen. Cass was rendered momentarily incapable of speech. "Ollie talks about her all the time..." Okay. More than momentarily incapable of speech. "It's a bit disgusting, like," he teased, laughing, the sound like the thunder of angels wings in her ears.

"Ehm, eh-- Yeah. This, this is Elouise," she said, finally locating her voice, as she turned Elouise in her lap to face outward. "El, this is Ben. He's Ollie's friend."

Ben plopped into a chair he'd pulled up across from them and smiled winningly at El before looking up and meeting her eyes.

"Just Ollie's friend?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Okay, fine," she laughed, even though the last thing she wanted to do was laugh, because the last thing she wanted from Ben was friendship, "El, this is Ben. He's mine and Ollie's friend."

"Better..." Ben trailed off suggestively and Cass had to swallow her rushing heart, which immediately rose back into her throat when Ben reached out and let El grasp his first finger. "Hi Elouise. You're awful tiny. Ollie says you've got some lungs, though." El gurgled in delight. "Yeah? Do you? Or is Ollie just talking nonsense and being silly? He keeps blaming you for why he's so tired at practice every day. It's not very nice, is it? You're just a little thing."

"Oh, Ollie's not wrong. This little thing makes more noise than any baby I've ever met. Don't you El, huh, don't you?"

"I don't believe your sister for one minute, Elouise, you're too beautiful for that nonsense to be true," Ben said, his enthusiastic modulation directed at Elouise but his smiling eyes on Cass.

And okay. Maybe it was still hard to breathe. And talk. And like, think, like even at all. Because Elouise was generally kind of just a pain in the tail, even if she was just a tiny thing. But this was a sort of spectacular turn of events. This was maybe the most words Benjamin had ever spoken in her presence and oh god she loved the sound of his voice and his smile and even the way he looked at Elouise. Bollocks.

"I'll just ring you next time Elouise is screaming at two am, shall I? You can hang on the line until she's done. Usually that's at like, four. Sometimes five."

"Okay, your big sister means business, El. I don't know if I'm here for  _that_. Although... I suppose I could be talked into giving her my mobile number. You know. So she can prove her point."

Yup Cass is dying on the inside. DYING. Her insides are shriveling up and in moments she is just going to be a withered husk of teenage girl. They'll have to mark this spot with a stone that reads "Here Lies Cass, She Died From Benjamin Philip Charles Willoughby VI's Perfection Long Before Her Time."

Aaaand Ben was releasing El's tiny hand and picking her phone up off the table and unlocking it and oh god, texting his own mobile. This had to be heaven. She was already on the other side. Even Elouise wasn't fussing.

"I was six when my last brother was born, but I remember being just obsessed with him when he was tiny like this. I'd nearly forgotten what it was like. Anyway, eh-- you should text me. Or I'll text you, or... yeah. I could come by and see El and you again and, oh, Ollie's calling after me. I-- I should go, but eh-- yeah. See you soon?"

Okay. So maybe Elouise could stay.

 

*

 

**_It seems like love is_ still _in the air over at the Styles-McGovern compound. Only this time it's the younger generation._**

**_This past Friday night, Harry Styles was spotted chaperoning his 14-year-old daughter Cass on a date with one of brother Ollie's schoolmates, Benjamin Willoughby. With Dad in tow, Cass and Benjamin saw a film and got ice-cream and walked about Camden Town afterward._ **

**_Styles did his best to stay inconspicuous, but that proved to be impossible, and you are going to want to see the adorable pictures that have just surfaced. And hush, you! None of these pics include the kids' faces, mostly just Harry's fond, nervous, sweet, apprehensive looks. A dad for the ages, he is. Even if he's clearly not letting daughter Cass out of his sight any time soon._ **

**Author's Note:**

> A little fluff. A lot of info. I hope you caught it all!
> 
> And I hope you enjoyed Cass. And her story.
> 
> I... had so many character voices in my head as I was finishing 'Things to Ruin' that I couldn't bear to walk away completely, but the idea of dragging that story out... or of adding an epilogue or something that would... that would force my interpretation of these character's lives on you just felt... yucky.
> 
> So I separated them out. And I'm working on new stories to tell in ways that feel interesting and authentic to me. Cass' story was just the first. Was the one that shouted loudest at me, begging to be told.
> 
> In any case. There will be drabbles over on tumblr ([twooldfourthis](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/twooldfourthis)), including one I posted the other day called "[On the Time With All the Carrots](http://twooldfourthis.tumblr.com/post/101175027816/on-the-time-with-all-the-carrots)." And there will likely be more short stories posted here, as a part of the Fireproof series. Some may be hopelessly self-indulgent. Some will hopefully be more... compelling, sharing stories in new ways (sort of like how I hope Cass' story worked out). But I am at work on a larger piece that could accompany the series, now, too. It's still in early planning stages, but I'm terribly fond of the idea. So. Keep your eyes peeled.
> 
> And as always, feel free to hit me up on Tumblr. Can't wait to see what you thought of Here Lies Cass.
> 
> Much love.
> 
> xxloose


End file.
